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Children's drawings depict the ongoing tragedy in Darfur

Posted: Thursday, August 23, 2007

Anna Schmitt, a researcher with Waging Peace, a nongovernmental organization that campaigns against genocide and human-rights abuses, was in eastern Chad earlier this year interviewing refugees from Darfur when a Sudanese woman offered her a suggestion.

"If you want to know what really happened in Darfur, you should ask the children," she said.

Schmitt did just that. What she discovered was youngsters who not only were able to provide detailed accounts of the brutal civil war that had driven them from their homeland, but also draw detailed pictures of the attacks they had witnessed.

The drawings, produced by children whose ages range from 5 to 18, show villages being overrun by tanks and armed men on horseback. There are images of houses being set on fire while helicopters circle high above.

In their pictures, the helicopters clearly bear the marking of the Sudanese military. The men wearing camouflage uniforms are labeled as members of the Janjaweed militia.

The government in Khartoum has long denied claims that it is supporting the militia.

Other drawings show village women being led off in chains by the attackers and civilians being shot down as they attempt to defend themselves using spears and arrows.

Some argue that the drawings may be the most compelling evidence yet that government forces are actively working with the militia to drive millions of non-Arabs from the region.

They may, in fact, be offered as evidence in the possible trial before the International Criminal Court of Ahmad Harun, currently Sudan's minister for humanitarian affairs, and Ali Kushayb, the Janjaweed militia leader, who have been accused of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against the innocent civilians in western Darfur.

The court already has issued arrest warrants for the pair.

Waging Peace said it plans to submit 500 drawings to the ICC as evidence.

"We think that these pictures are evidence of genocide and show what has been happening for the past four years, and that they constitute evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity," said Louise Roland-Gosselin, the director of Waging Peace.

"Children basically speak the truth, and the truth coming out of them is much more credible than what's coming from the Sudanese government," she said.

While the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has welcomed the involvement of nongovernmental organizations in obtaining evidence regarding the alleged war crimes in the region, he has so far declined to indicate whether the children's pictures could be used as evidence.

Others caution that using the children's pictures or testimony is fraught with problems. It would need to be shown, for example, that the interviewers did not unduly influence the children's account of events.

Jean Flamme, an attorney representing Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a former militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo indicted for war crimes, already has challenged the credibility of evidence obtained by nongovernmental organizations in that case.

"This is a big problem," he stressed.

Meanwhile, another human-rights group, the International Federation of Human Rights, also has begun collecting drawings produced by the children currently in refugee camps in Chad.

Karine Bonneau, the organization's director, said her organization can provide the precise circumstances under which the drawings were obtained and that they should be entered into evidence in any war-crimes prosecution.

There are other concerns, however, about using the children's illustrations in court.

If their artwork is used, and the children are called to testify, they could be subjected to vigorous cross-examination by the defendants' lawyers. Judges may be reluctant to admit evidence that would ultimately subject children to a potentially harsh round of questioning.

Margriet Blaauw, from the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, cautions that "getting justice is hard," and forcing the children to give evidence in a trial could leave them traumatized for a second time.

"Their wounds cannot be reopened, and then left. It is up to the court to provide sufficient protection to the children's rights," Blaauw said.

 Rebekah Heil and Katy Glassborow are journalists who write for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.